Tea Cakes Do Get Stale
It's sad, I tell ya! My literary blog has turned into a gossip mill about an author who isn't necessary at the top of my list for literary genious. I, personally, think it was a mistake for Terry to write a book that was loosely based on her island romance. I think it was a mistake for her to let Jonathan "tag along" on her readings/signings and have his own table set up. Not destined to last, age and/or cultural differences aside, this was just a disaster waiting to happen. My internet discussion lists are heating up over this. Misogyny, agism, and good old fashioned "battles of the sexes" are emerging over the particulars of her little liaison. A popular blogger was reprimanded by sfgate.com for reprinting the full text of their article (and the comments for his post got heated as well ... I had some choice words too) and now this Sun Times columnist is adding her two cents.
"There's a new 'Tea Cake' twist.
Back in the day when Zora Neal Hurston wrote 'Their Eyes Were Watching God,' the only thing Janie had to worry about was her lover Tea Cake leaving her for a younger woman. Janie was 'around forty' and Tea Cake was 'around twenty-five.' It never happened, which is one thing that has made Hurston's 1937 love story a classic of black literature.
But romance is a lot messier in real life.
After convincing older women that they can find love with a man half their age, best-selling writer Terry McMillan's Tea Cake has run off -- with a man. Jonathan Plummer was 20 years old and McMillan was 43 when they met while she was staying at a Jamaican resort in 1995. At the time, McMillan had made millions from her novel 'Waiting to Exhale' and was so popular she once complained that she couldn't walk through an airport without sisters stopping her.
But apparently brothers in the United States weren't interested, because McMillan was in Jamaica getting turned on by a local just like legions of other lonely American women who go to the Caribbean looking for romantic adventure. Only McMillan did what a lot of other women wish they could do. She brought the young man home, put him up in her $4 million home, and married him three years later."
I promise to start doing book reviews. Perhaps all of this real life "fiction" is just the push that I need.
posted by Qusan at 12:16 PM
1 Comments:
As a black male of Jamaican background living in America, I find Terry's situation regrettable and I'm ashamed to admit, not too isolated. What isn't spoken of however, is the utterly hedonistic and bohemian attitudes displayed by many womne going to the Caribbean as if simply being in a foreign country is an automatic license to abandon all sense of decency and self respect. If no one is around to see, does that mean that we become our primal, base selves and return to a false sense of modesty only when around those that we have to interact with on a daily basis? It is alarming to see the depths of depravity that many visitors to Jamaica and the Caribbean exhibit when they would insist upon (and demand) receiving a level of respect from their peers that is incongrouous with their attitudes abroad. That said, no woman deserves to befall Terry's fate and I particularly feel for any black woman who this happens to. Going to the brain for a moments reflection however, what of the faithful husbands and boyfriends who are unwitting recipients of their partner's behavior overseas when they go on these 'trips with the girls'? Feeling that any woman who is intelligent, ambitious and charming MUST have a man back in the U.S., many of the Caribbean men see the sex as an implied and agreed upon trade for the benefits of possible emigration to the States..certainly not a discussion entered into before the physical interaction takes place..! What to do? Can you find love in Jamaica? Of course! Is every man on the lookout for an impressionable woman who can provide a 'green card'? No! Does it happen? Yes and more often than any of us know! I comiserate with Terry and I really don't know how one 'finds out' that one is gay all of a sudden..These are the horrors that y'all are facing and it upsets men like myself that this happens..Gotta try to keep your eyes open cuz there's no real solution to this problem..In the meantime, if you want to understand some of the problems that many a Jamaican male experiences when he comes to America, his hopes, fears and challenges, read 'A Jamaican Storyteller's Tale' by Lorrimer Burford...It might provide some insight..
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